With Billie: A New Look at the Unforgettable Lady Day

by Julia Blackburn

some’. He loved to watch her eat. ‘She was very dainty and Billie was – what could you say? – a full-bodied woman, but she was very graceful in anything she did. She was very clean, very neat … the way she handled a fork. We’d be in a restaurant and we’d be eating. Somebody would say, “Hey Bobby, what’s the matter with you?” I’d say, “Nothing.” But deep in my mind I’m looking at her and saying, “You do things in a beautiful way.” ’

Sonny White was so beautiful and I think she threw him a curve. He was a little chubby man, a brown, pretty man, a dear boy. He was a cherub. And he loved Lady. He knew all about her life and her thing, but he played for her regardless. I’ve seen him come off the stage and break down. She’d just sung ‘You’re My Thrill’ or whatever, and Sonny White would walk away and hide in a corner and cry.

Lester Young adored her. He loved Lady like he loved spring, summer, winter and fall and every day that broke at dawn. It was not a love-love thing, it was just a passion.

night. Jimmy Rowles says it was ‘like accidental joy. And Billie was happy all the time.’

People didn’t really know Billie. She was always trying to keep a hard front, but she was a beautiful person. She was a great woman. She had more feeling for everything and for people than anybody I’ve been in touch with. She wasn’t selfish; she was generous to a fault. She always respected musicians. I don’t think she ever said an evil thing to me or ever looked around to say anything, if anything went wrong musically. Billie was a complete stylist. When you listen to her sing, you feel she has lived that experience and she is telling a story about it. I don’t think anyone can express a story better than Billie. She didn’t have a great range or any of that stuff, but most of the tunes she sang had good melody lines and good stories, and they’re not easy to sing or play. She didn’t sing a song unless she wanted to, or unless someone slipped her man some money under the table and her man told her to do the song; then she’d do it even if it wasn’t right for her.

‘the magic of her proudness’.

And then there she was, standing on a rough stage platform, without the luxury and solitude of a perfectly aimed pinpoint of pink light to follow her every step and to drive away the eyes of those who were watching her. The crowd surged around as close as possible to see this miracle of worldly success, who had been hatched out of their same nest of poverty and confusion.

‘But I was despondent because I loved it. It was so sad. It didn’t matter whether she sang the right note or the wrong note, because she sang twenty thousand wrong notes on that thing. But she poured her heart out. What she ended up doing was a recitation to the music, although I hadn’t realised it at the time.’b Ray Ellis also realised that on that record Billie made him ‘look good … She gave me the opportunity to be heard. If you listen to the album, you hear the orchestra very plainly.’